With election season upon us and rural mobile networks pushed to their limits during harvest, it’s an ideal moment to examine the persistent gaps and dropouts in mobile coverage. Before diving into the political and economic factors shaping mobile connectivity, let’s take a step back and explore the history of Australia’s mobile network rollout. By tracing its development, we might uncover how so much of the bush was left behind.

For those who remember the 1980s, the image of a mobile phone’s debut on the silver screen is unforgettable. It was in Wall Street (1987), where Michael Douglas, as the iconic Gordon Gekko, immortalised the phrase “Greed is good.” Gekko epitomised the high-powered yuppie, complete with a mobile phone—a status symbol as much as it was a communication device. Yet for all its prestige, the functionality of those early mobile phones was laughably limited. Within the city’s CBD, they were cutting-edge; venture just a few kilometres away, however, and you’d find yourself scrambling for the nearest phone box to make a call.

Talking about phone boxes, here is a point of interest: back in the 1990s, Australia boasted around 80,000 public phone boxes as they were an essential part of our connectivity. Today, fewer than 15,000 remain.  Why? Because we have all turned to mobile phones to remain in touch.

Which raises the question, what are Telstra’s modern-day obligations when it comes to connectivity? Under the current version of the ‘Universal Service Obligation’ Telstra is required to ensure access to standard telephone services, including household landlines and public payphones, for communities.

Yet there is no corresponding obligation to provide mobile coverage—a glaring omission.

So, any complaints about mobile service gaps invariably fall at the feet of what was once known as Telecom, the modern-day Telstra, but, having been privatised back in the 1990s, it’s no longer the shareholders’ responsibility to keep the bush connected. That responsibility falls at the feet of the Federal government, but for some reason we all keep pointing the finger at Telstra.

The failure of past and present governments to redefine service obligations in the mobile age, along with the past failure to allocate the billions of dollars generated from selling spectrum towards underwriting universal mobile coverage, is the root of many of the problems rural and regional Australia experience today with gaps in our mobile coverage.

This oversight represents a missed opportunity to address the current inequities in connectivity—something I’ll unpack further, but first back to the history lesson.

The arrival of mobile phones in Australia in 1987 sparked excitement, but the early 1G analogue network left much to be desired. By the 1990s, the introduction of 2G brought Australians into the digital age, offering text messaging and a glimpse of mobile connectivity’s potential. As mobile phones gained popularity, their compact flip-phone designs became symbols of modernity and status. However, the limited network of towers kept coverage largely restricted to major cities and regional hubs. Despite these limitations, the idea of staying connected through a sleek, portable device captured the imagination of a nation on the brink of a mobile revolution.

Fun fact: Despite its limitations, 2G GSM could reach up to 120km from a tower, granting many farmers connectivity even if they were miles from their local antenna. By 2003, the arrival of 3G ushered in email capabilities (ah, the days of the BlackBerry!) and a gradual expansion of towers along regional highways. Yet the rollout was frustratingly slow—especially when compared to the Government’s current zeal for building wind farms. It’s curious how priorities shift; when policymakers decide something matters, it gets done with remarkable speed, no matter the cost, but when they don’t, we can yell all we like but they won’t hear us.

The real breakthrough for rural Australia came in 2006 with Telstra’s Next G network. Utilising the 850 MHz band, this network excelled at penetrating buildings and covering greater distances. One notable milestone occurred in 2007 when a call made from Mount Kosciuszko to Melbourne—200km away—set the distance record for mobile communication. Finally, the man from Snowy River could call for help and walk down the mountain to round up the horses without risking life and limb.

The days of mobile phones serving only as tools for calls and text messages ended abruptly in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone. This generational changing device coincided with the rise of data-hungry apps like Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005), and Twitter (2006), which has rewired millennials’ brains while reshaping our relationship with technology.

This just happened to occur at the same time as the former Barnett government came to power (2007) and Grylls began the roll out of the Royalties for Regions program which pumped around $20m a year into underwriting 200 mobile towers across rural and regional Western Australia.

It also provided a golden opportunity to design the network of towers marching across paddocks from scratch, prioritising maximum coverage across regions like the Wheatbelt and Great Southern where farmers needed paddock to paddock coverage. This could have begun with the simple yet blindingly obvious idea of placing towers on hill tops rather than in valleys, where many currently sit due to towns being historically established at lower elevations near water sources. By leveraging the natural elevation of the landscape, a more effective and far-reaching mobile network could have been achieved from the outset.

It was a massive missed opportunity, even more so as it coincided with the arrival of 4G in 2011 and the commencement of the Federal Blackspots program which really kicked off the race to fill the last of the big regional gaps.

The race to build the last towers saw the telcos focused on the low hanging fruit of the remaining gaps in the smaller country towns and along regional highways which conveniently offered easy access to power lines and the fibre optic. This has again skewed where the towers have ended up. Another missed opportunity.

Fast forward to today and our mobile network is largely like our network of country towns; designed for the horse and cart era, or as the Irish would say when asked for directions “I would not start from here”. Worse, there is now no incentive to fill the gaps between either towns or towers to improve service delivery for those who live in the bush.

Now you might ask how hard is it to put up another tower to improve coverage across my farm? The answer is that unfortunately the telcos have lost all interest in new towers. Why? Because building the tower is the cheap part of the equation. Kitting them out with the hardware, power and hooking them up to fibre or microwave and then upgrading them every decade or so is where it gets expensive.

Hence the telcos’ lack of interest in plucking the last fruit from the highest branches. The further the telcos got from a regional centre, the bigger the long-term losses and the more expensive the complete towers, which start at $500,000 and are upwards of $1.5m for a tall remote one far from power or fibre.

This is where the Federal government was supposed to come in with their Black Spots program. The only problem is that when they started, Round 1 was $100m and the funding was directed at regional towns, 10 years on and Round 7 this year is just $12.5m and it’s directed at really remote regional communities. It’s the bit in the middle where the farms are that have been dropped out and that have largely missed out.

Not that you would know that if you were working in the Department of Communications in Canberra; they get full coverage from home to work so all is connected in their world. If they were to take the time to pull up Telstra’s high-definition map of Western Australia’s Wheatbelt region, they would see that we have around 90 per cent coverage, which is enough as far as they are concerned. The problem is not only the hundreds of small gaps but the fact that the gaps seem to be moving and growing as the back paddock that used to have coverage now has nothing.

Worse, the Telstra map might say that the paddock should have coverage and is well within the normal limit of 35km of a 4G tower, but the maps never seem to represent the real world.

Another interesting fact: each G simply means more data can be loaded onto the low, medium and high spectrums. Think of it as extracting more horsepower out of 4, 6 and 8 cylinders in a tractor which allows you to pull a heavier load rather than travel further.  So, swapping from 3G to 4G is all about the data load that the spectrum can carry rather than how far it carries so in theory 3 and 4G should offer the same coverage. Unfortunately, this is not what people are experiencing.

The electrical engineers say that hills, trees, sheds or simply moving the hardware on the tower 6 inches up and down the pole when swapping from 3 to 4 to 5G can cause small black spots where in the past there were none.  Add to this the fact that the more kids are on TikTok, the less reliable the network is for those on the edge of the published coverage, which means those on the last mile get dropped off. And coverage is getting worse not better.

The end result is that every harvest and seeding we have more unhappy farmers who lose coverage in parts of the paddock where they once had it, which means the more Telstra is blamed and the more government mutters about Telstra and points to their Black Spots program.  What we need are solutions not blame shifting.  

Now the next thing to understand is the difference between your idea of coverage and that of the telco.

When you compare your farm with what you know has had coverage in the past and the Optus or Telstra maps, you will be aware that, more often than not, parts of the farm have had coverage, but they are not shaded in on the telco’s maps.

This is what they call fortuitous coverage, which is where you have a jagged 1 bar but it’s really a bonus, not what you should rely on as part of your service.

Which brings us to the definition of what the telcos guarantee when you take out your mobile plan. Well, sorry to say, having read the fine print, it’s not much. Why? Because the government has not mandated that any minimum level of service should go with the original sale of the spectrum.

Which takes me to the TPG saga—yet another missed opportunity by government to ensure good coverage. In 2019, TPG abandoned its plans to build a 4G network after its main equipment provider, Huawei, was banned for security reasons. In 2022, Telstra and TPG tried to partner up, aiming to share resources in regional areas. Telstra would gain access to TPG’s spectrum, and TPG would benefit from Telstra’s extensive regional tower network—a win-win, right? Wrong.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) stepped in and blocked the deal, concerned about “reduced competition” in urban centres. Never mind that it would have solved countless connectivity issues in the bush—the ACCC seemed more interested in theoretical competition in city markets than in connecting rural Australians. This left valuable 3.6 GHz spectrum up for grabs which could have gone to Telstra to alleviate the strain on rural networks. Instead, TPG merged with Vodafone, but their footprint is about half that of Telstra’s across the Wheatbelt so the only people it will help are those in the big regional towns.

The brutal reality is that Optus has no incentive to cover the map in towers, so Telstra remains the only real option in the bush, but they need more spectrum which Optus is now sitting on, which is a right royal mess.

The Federal government is very aware of all this, but they struggle to figure out what to do as the competition tsars are totally fixated on the idea of competition (except when it comes to supermarkets), and while the telcos refuse to share towers (even through the law says they have to) there is zero political or corporate interest in building more towers in the bush.

So what is the Federal government doing about all this? Well not much: in fact, it seems the Prime Minister Albanese is more interested in ensuring unbroken coverage from the Lodge to his beach house, so this government’s focus is limited to the major highways, which is why they promised at the last election a national audit of mobile coverage on regional roads costing $17m.

To do this they are using Australia Post to map mobile coverage along 180,000km of the rural network they travel, which is good for farmers who see the big red trucks going past their front paddock, but it’s not going to cover the wheat trucks journey from the back paddock.

What the Federal government should have been doing is mapping something far more relevant to farmers, which is the before and after impact of the 3G shutdown, along with before and during harvest coverage to see just what impact the loss of 3G is having on connectivity.

Without this data we have no idea what is causing black sports in areas where farmers had historic coverage.

So, what’s the solution? Can farmers buy new tech that will cover the gaps. Most farmers will have already brought a GO Repeater $816, and many are upgrading their antennas to the multi band Zetifi $549, which makes a real difference. Some are even buying the new ZetiRover X $2200 which gives them small cell connectivity linking the antenna on the farmhouse to the header or sheds to create a 300m radius Wi-Fi zone which allows mobile calls though the internet. It’s not like having proper mobile coverage but it’s better than nothing.

Some have the old school Iridium Sat Phones, you know the big slow and clunky things the exploration geologists use, but they cost $2,295 and $100 a month. Others have brought the new Starlink low flying satellite system. Their stationary dish system costs $599 and $125/month which will give you internet and Wi-Fi phone coverage for the house, header and caravan.

If you want the Starlink mobile version you will be pushed to buy the Flat High Performance Starlink dish that sits on the roof of the header tractor but it costs $3,740 and you will pay $170 month (turn on off when you need it to save the monthly fee). This system is designed to provide connectivity on the run, designed for Billy Bob in his RV when he crosses into Mexico or heads up to Alaska but it works just fine here.

However, I’m told you can cheat and bolt the cheaper stationary disk to the roof and use it to make calls on the move (YouTube ‘Starlink while Driving’) which should work just fine in the header or tractor but you run the risk of being cut off as Elon wants you to upgrade to the mobile package and dish as he is running out of money.

Interestingly the latest iPhone 16s is now able to send SOS texts to these satellites and by the end of next year text should also be available; just don’t expect mobile calls to be a viable option any time soon. 

Failing all the above, the one other option that is being taken up by inpatient communities that have given up waiting for Optus or Telstra to fill the gaps is to do a private joint venture to build a tower to cater for a group of farmers.

You can imagine the footprint a 60m tower would have if parked on top of Mt Matilda (Wongan Shire), Kokerbin Rock (Bruce Rock) or the Humps at Hyden, but then you can imagine the screams of outrage from the heritage mobs who would no doubt prefer black spots to a real voice that connects them to Canberra.

I’m told a typical tower would cost around $250,000. To that you need to add the Radio Heads $250,000, Base station $250,000, remote power $250,000, plus ground lease $10,000 and microwave data lease at around $20,000pa, add maintenance, depreciation and return on capital and there is no change out of $1m and $100,000 a year. If all the local users already have a Telstra account, you are left with a few backpackers buying sim cards to fund the capital and expenses which simply does not add up. Hence you can see why the telcos are pointing to the Federal government to solve the last mile problem of connectivity.

Which raises the question, who should pay to cover the gaps now that the telcos have no incentive to invest further in the bush, and the State and Federal governments have buggered up the placement of the towers?

Should it be the government? Telstra and Optus? Or is it on those who choose to live in the bush?

Optus, forget it; their existing network has too many gaps in it. Telstra is flat out building 5G microgrids in the Melbourne CBD and milking the modern day yuppies now known as HENRYS (High Earners, Not Rich Yet) for their TikTok addiction.

Which leaves the Federal government and their Blackspots program.  Unfortunately, while $55m has just been announced for the Round 8 program (must be an election year) the focus is on backup systems for national disasters (no doubt worried about a summer election with lots of fires) rather than filling the coverage gaps across Australia.

If rural Australia is ever going to have decent coverage, it’ll require holding the government to account and locking in a long-term commitment to filling the mobile gaps, but the only way to do this with all the new satellite technology around is to refocus the future of the Black Spots program towards mobile towers. This is what I think needs to be part of the coalition policy going into the next election: mapping the existing gaps then prioritising where future towers should be built, forcing the telcos to co-allocate on the existing towers, reallocating spectrum to Telstra and accepting that in some areas a monopoly provider is better than no provider, and allocating $250m a year for the next four years, with the aim of building 250 towers a year across Australia’s grain belt.